Brown herself guessed it. The girls only knew of Miss Sherman that
she was the oldest of eight brothers and sisters, and that she gave
her mother all her money every Saturday night.

Miss Elsie Kirk came next, in the line of girls that faced the room,
and Miss Violet Kirk was next to her sister. The Kirks were pretty,
light-headed girls, frivolous, common and noisy. They had a
comfortable home, and worked only because they rather liked the
excitement of the office, and liked an excuse to come downtown every
day. Elsie, the prettier and younger, was often "mean" to her
sister, but Violet was always good-natured, and used to smile as she
told the girls how Elsie captured her--Violet's--admirers. The
Kirks' conversation was all of "cases," "the crowd," "the times of
their lives," and "new crushes"; they never pinned on their
audacious hats to go home at night without speculating as to
possible romantic adventures on the car, on the street, everywhere.
They were not quite approved by the rest of the Front Office staff;
their color was not all natural, their clothes were "fussy." Both
wore enormous dry "rats," that showed through the thin covering of
outer hair, their stockings were quite transparent, and bows of pink
and lavender ribbon were visible under their thin shirt-waists. It
was known that Elsie had been "spoken to" by old Mr. Baxter, on the
subject of a long, loose curl, which had appeared one morning,
dangling over her powdered neck. The Kirks, it was felt, never gave
an impression of freshness, of soapiness, of starched apparel, and
Front Office had a high standard of personal cleanliness. Miss
Sherman's ears glowed coldly all morning long, from early ablutions,
and her fingertips were always icy, and Miss Thornton and Susan
Brown liked to allude casually to their "cold plunges" as a daily
occurrence--although neither one ever really took a cold bath,